Fresh ‘Boroume’ campaign seeks to put surplus fruit to good use

By Lina Giannarou

Orange trees lend splashes of color to her garden. Year after year, after filling the neighborhood with the fragrance of their blossoms, they grow heavy with fruit, waiting to be harvested. Zina Angelopoulou, a 36-year-old teacher from Athens, moved with her family to the quiet village of Kokkoni on the outskirts of Corinth 10 years ago to take up orange farming. She produces juice, pies, marmalade and all manner of sweets made from the fruit. “But no matter how many we consume there will always be a surplus and we are forced to throw some away. Isn’t that a pity?” she told Kathimerini.

Angelopoulou was one of the first farmers to take part in the “Boroume” (Yes, We Can) campaign aimed at reducing waste from agricultural production. She approached the organizers behind the initiative and asked them, “Instead of letting my oranges go to waste, could we give them to those who need them?” Within a few hours the volunteers got to work. They gathered Angelopoulou’s spare oranges and moved them to the premises of Children’s Ark, a nongovernmental organization that helps families in need and which is currently running a program to support the Roma community in Examilia in Corinth.

A huge amount of agricultural produce goes to waste across Greece every day. According to international research, around 30 percent of the world’s agricultural produce ends up in the dump, either because it does not satisfy strict market requirements concerning the appearance of the product or because the cost of collecting it outweighs the benefits for the producer. The waste is so great that a movement is growing rapidly in other parts of the world known as “gleaning” and aimed at utilizing the production surplus for the benefit of the poor. In a...